


Under Juniper

by Lucyemers



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Child death (mentioned), Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Grimm's Tales, Lewis Fright Fest 2016, Under the Juniper Tree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 09:18:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8440039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucyemers/pseuds/Lucyemers
Summary: Robbie and James are haunted by a fairytale.





	

_ Once upon a time, there was an inspector and a sergeant who were called to an old house by anonymous phone tip. When they arrived there was no evidence of anything more suspicious than an estate sale. They were both tired from wrapping up a long case, and irritated that police time had been wasted, but, they reasoned, since Halloween was close upon them the call had most likely been the work of children finding the old house delightfully spooky. Being too tired to be bothered much they stayed, and browsed the items in the house. In a move that did not surprise his inspector in the least, the sergeant went first to the library. _

 

Lewis watched James lean languidly against the back of the window seat in the old library, autumn light catching the gold leaf that tipped the pages of the antique leather bound book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. “Never pegged you as one for children’s tales”, he teased. When Hathaway appeared too engrossed to reply he sat beside him on the window seat, taking a moment to peer into the garden beyond and enjoy the orange October sunset dappling through the tall pine. He was drawn out of his reverie by a piercing note of birdsong. It was not one of tranquility that added to the pleasant autumnal atmosphere, but rather one of ominous dread that brought to mind Hitchcock films and made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, and the room seem to go a shade colder. The eerie warbling rose in pitch quickly and pitilessly until it drove Lewis to his feet and set him to pacing, half looking at the books on the shelves not really seeing them at all. When he didn’t think he could bear the noise any longer he put a hand to James’s shoulder a bit roughly perhaps, jolted him out of the book saying, “Christ, James, dunno how you can read at all with that awful warbling.” All tranquility and peace James replied, “What warbling, Sir?” And the noise stopped. Abruptly. As if it had been the shadow of a nightmare that might have haunted him in a quick nod off brought on by sitting for a moment too long in the soporific sunlight. He blinked confusedly at Hathaway and sighed deeply saying, “Hurry up and buy the book lad, I need a drink.”

 

_ Once upon a time an inspector and a sergeant had a few too many pints at the pub, and stumbled home to the inspector's house, finding it difficult to stop talking of the particulars of the long and difficult case the whole walk home. As they felt themselves starting to sober up they decided to brew coffee and talk of stories unrelated to police work. The sergeant took out the leather bound book of tales and began again to flip through the gilded pages. When faced with his inspector’s good natured teasing about Disney characters and nursery rhymes he decided to tell him a story that had unsettled him deeply since the moment he read it. _

 

“Listen, I know you think these stories are for children but literature for young people can be and, in fact, typically have been, historically speaking quite grim, pun intended, Sir.” 

 

“What, a scary fairy godmother and all that?” Lewis grinned as he handed James a steaming cup of coffee.

 

“Actually, Sir, in the original Cinderella the assistance comes not from a fairy godmother but from a tree that symbolizes her dead mother.” 

 

“Alright, clever clogs”, Lewis raised his eyebrows impressed, “Not much scary about that though.” 

 

“No”, James conceded, “but there are others. The Juniper Tree, for example.”

 

“I’ve never heard of it.” 

 

“Most people haven’t. It has your typical evil stepmother, but she really takes her wickedness to a new level. She cuts her son’s head off but doesn’t want to take the blame for it, so she tricks his sister Marlene into thinking it was her fault and convinces her that they need to get rid of the body so her father won’t find out.”

 

Lewis grimaced, “This was a children’s story?” 

 

“It gets worse”, James replied ominously. “The stepmother cooks the boy’s remains into a stew that she serves to his father.” 

 

“What?” 

 

“He didn’t know he was eating his son.”

 

“I don’t think that makes it better.”

 

James pressed on with the story. “The father throws the bones under the table as he eats, and later Marlene recovers them and buries them under the juniper tree in the backyard. The same tree under which the boy’s mother is buried.” 

 

Lewis sighed uneasily, “That certainly is grim.”

 

“It gets better. The old fairytales had a penchant for exacting vengeance on their villains. The boy is reincarnated into a bird and over and over he sings this song, 

‘My mother, she chopped my head off,

My father, he swallowed me.

My sister, she buried all of my bones under the juniper tree.

Tweet, tweet. Tweet tweet.

Never will you find a prettier bird than me.’

 

It didn’t escape Lewis’s notice that Hathaway hadn’t picked up the book to read the song. “You know it by heart”, he said gently all trace of mocking gone.

 

“I read it as a child. It stuck with me. So, as the boy, or bird rather, is singing this he flies around the village. And as he is singing the villagers give him trinkets in exchange for his song: a gold chain, red shoes, and a millstone. He flies back to his family and sings to them. He gives the gold chain to his father, the shoes to his sister, and the millstone…” 

 

“He drops on his evil stepmother’s head?” Lewis finished. 

 

“Yep.”

 

“That's pretty grisly for a children's story isn't it?” 

 

“...Yeah.”

 

_ Once upon a time the sergeant fell asleep on the inspector's sofa, as he often did. The next morning being a Saturday he didn't mind the lack of sleep, but he did mind the faint burbling from the stove in the kitchen. Thinking it was the ice maker or furnace he walked in to check. In the place of where a pot simmering a stew might be he saw... nothing. And yet he heard it all the same. He minded that when he tried to read himself into a slumber he would emerge from sleep with the book opened to the self same story he had told the detective earlier in the evening…though it was not the story he had been reading each time he dozed off.  _

 

_ Once upon a time the inspector woke miserably sleepy. He did not tell the sergeant that he had once again been plagued by the harsh bird song logically outside his window, but seemingly inside his head. He did not tell his sergeant that he'd woken with all the symptoms of a hangover but, instead of the thick taste of all the beer he had drunk, his pores seemed to leak all the cloying freshness of gin. _

 

Lewis dropped the abandoned coffee cups from the previous evening into the sink and began sloppily filling a paper cone for a fresh pot. When he had finally emerged into his sitting room he’d found Hathaway out cold, and from the disheveled look of him he assumed he’d only just achieved that state. The leatherbound book lay closed on the floor by the sofa, though he suspected James had read it through the wee hours of the morning. In the soft light of the house’s library it had looked like such an inviting volume. But after James’s tale and his nearly sleepless night, the sight of it turned his stomach. 

 

When the coffee was ready he took a few sips rather too quickly to obscure the strange gin taste in his mouth. He took a mug of coffee into the sitting room and  immediately dropped it on the ground when he saw the book open on the table and James still fast asleep. Hands scalded with coffee Lewis had cursed loudly, and when James woke suddenly and saw the book on the table he didn’t have to look very closely. He knew what title graced the top of the page in blood red calligraphy. 

 

_ Once upon a time the inspector and the sergeant phoned the station on their day off. They asked the very same assistant who had transferred the call the day before to describe the voice on the other end of the line. The assistant had no recollection of such a call.  _

 

_ Once upon a time the inspector and the sergeant returned to the old house with the library full of beautiful books in which they’d taken rest not but a few hours prior. They found it had fallen into disrepair as if long ago abandoned. The tree, however, that stood in the backyard and smelled of gin was flourishing. _

 

_ Once upon a time the inspector and the sergeant returned to the tree and dug around it’s roots and sighed in wonder and horror but not in surprise at the long dead remains they found there. _

 

_ Once upon a time the inspector and the sergeant sent a leatherbound book off to forensics and waited. (For it was the twenty-first century, after all). _

 

_ Once upon a time the inspector and the sergeant mulled over the sad stories they had heard and seen and helped to chronicle over the years, and they talked and talked, and talked. And they drank, and they laughed,and they cried. And cursed (but reverently so)  the timeless terror of children’s tales. _

 

_ Once upon a time… _

 

_ Once upon a time... _

  
  
  



End file.
